Why Writing a Thesis is so Hard

For one thing, I love the world and everything is too inherently interesting. For another thing, I may have an incurable form of literary ADD. If I can move from a formalist poet who in nearly every poem hails back to "the Bigs" (I'm talking about Dana Gioia and his love for common mythology and BIG important authors like Flaubert and Rilke) to evolutionary theory and how Darwin's Origin of the Species was like a soft opening of a Vegas Strip Joint..something must be wrong.. or terribly right.

I'm writing (or preemptively writing about writing) a thesis on the authorial mask. The protean switch-up between biography, speaker, author, person, persona, gender, race, whatever. Huge topic, right? Well, fear not, my base is John Berryman's 77 Dream Songs...which scares the crap out of me. The guy's been my hero (and antagonist) for 4 years now. It's probably high time I write about him, then again, every time I start to think about him critically, I get bogged down, freak out a bit, and start reading Richard Dawkins. Well, Life, Friends, is Boring, and I'm just going to go for it. To hell with convention, I'm writing an genetically, literary, John Berrymanian thesis that'll be great. Take that, English Department.


PS- I'm going to post a review on Dana Gioia's Interrogations at Noon real soon.